Thursday, February 23, 2012

Triumph of the Will (Self)

I am in several minds on hearing the news that Will Self – bearer of the world’s most Nietzschean name – is to take up a post as professor of contemporary thought at Brunel University. First of all it’s a brave gesture of support towards the notion of what a university really should be, an earthy v-sign to the Gradgrindian, box-ticking notion that a degree is nothing more than a preordained step on the ladder between school and a job. As described, Self’s proposed role crosses disciplinary boundaries, trampling over that lazy, banal excuse for ignorance: “Oh, we haven’t done that.” At the same time, I’m pretty sure it’s something of an attention-grabbing gimmick on the part of the university, sprinkling a little celebrity glitter – erudite glitter, but celeb-flavoured nonetheless – over their next prospectus.

6 comments:

Will Self is still breastfeeding on the 9/11 commission report. He's part of the old guard and will be washed away when events prove him to be naive and so embedded in the establishment he's unable to sit down and process the data.

Reliable whistleblowers on the Project Camelot Forum (George Green specifically) before it went south informed us the term Sheeple originated from the intelligence services when discussing that huge demographic chunk that believes what the corporate media tell them.

what am I like?

Author of books about Radiohead, Leonard Cohen and The Noughties, plus various odds and sods for The Guardian, Mojo, Time Out, Prospect, BBC, CNN and more. Finally doing an MA. You can reach me at timfootman (AT) gmail.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram.

good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste

So what’s all this Cultural Snow business, then?

“The writing itself is no big thing. I mean I like writing. It’s even relaxing for me. But the content is a real zero. Pointless in fact.”“What do you mean?”“I mean, for instance, you do the rounds of fifteen restaurants in one day, you eat one bite of each dish and leave the rest untouched. You think that makes sense?”“But you couldn’t very well eat everything, could you?”“Of course not. I’d drop dead in three days if I did. And everyone would think I was an idiot. I’d get no sympathy whatsoever.”“So what choice have you got?” she said.“I don't know. The way I see it, it’s like shoveling snow. You do it because somebody’s got to, not because it's fun.”“Shoveling snow, huh?” she mused.“Well, you know, cultural snow,” I said.—from Dance Dance Dance, by Haruki Murakami (translated by Alfred Birnbaum)